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EJToday: Top Headlines

EJToday is SEJ's selection of new and outstanding stories on environmental topics in print and on the air, updated every weekday. SEJ also offers a free e-mailed digest of the day's EJToday postings, called SEJ-beat. SEJ members are subscribed automatically, but may opt out here. Non-members may subscribe here. EJToday is also available via RSS feed. Please see Editorial Guidelines for EJToday content.

"The state of Michigan on Thursday challenged a federal court order demanding that officials deliver bottled water to Flint residents who can’t easily pick up their own from distribution sites around the city, calling the requirement 'unnecessary' and saying it would require 'a tremendous expenditure of taxpayer funds.'"

"More than 200 people have been hospitalized with breathing difficulties in Tennessee as wildfires scorched the Southeast. Over 30 large fires have burned more than 80,000 acres in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama and Kentucky, according to the US Forest Service."

"Uranium mines around the Grand Canyon. Oil drilling rigs studding the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. New coal and timber leases in the national forests. States divvying up millions of acres of federal land to dispose of as they wish. To environmental groups, it would be a nightmare. To miners, loggers, ranchers and conservative politicians in resource-dependent areas, it would be about time. Either way, Donald J. Trump’s election presages huge potential change on America’s 640 million acres of federal public lands, from the deep seas east of Maine to the volcanic coasts of Hawaii."

"NATURAL BRIDGE, Va.— In the Natural Bridge Hotel lobby before a pipeline summit in opposition to two planned fracked-gas pipelines, two words could be heard in almost every conversation: 'Trump' and 'election.'"

"A well-known author and conservationist is appealing the Bureau of Land Management's decision last month to reject her purchase of two oil and natural gas leases in Utah on the grounds that she had no intention of developing them."

"Nations, businesses and Washington's top diplomat urged president-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday not to withdraw the US from the climate-rescue Paris Agreement and its commitments to preserve Earth for future generations."

"As negotiators meet in Morocco to hammer out details of the landmark global climate change accord reached in Paris almost a year ago, the independent International Energy Agency warned that the nearly 200-nation deal was too weak to meet its avowed temperature target."

"The Obama administration is set to block the sale of new oil and gas drilling rights in U.S. Arctic waters under a five-year blueprint, handing a victory to environmentalists who said the activity threatened whales, walruses and other wildlife in the region."

"On the campaign trail, Donald Trump railed against what he called the 'FDA food police' and 'inspection overkill.' He has said he’d dramatically overhaul and limit federal government regulations. Now, big questions have arisen about how far he’ll go to scale back the incremental work done in recent years to keep pesticides, GMOs, and additives out of the food supply."

"EPA has added epidemiological expertise to a scientific advisory panel (SAP) that will meet next month to consider the carcinogenic potential of glyphosate. The previously postponed meeting is now scheduled to take place Dec. 13-16 in Arlington, Virginia."

"As the country awoke a week ago to the news of an impending Donald Trump presidency, shares in wind and solar energy companies quickly plummeted. ... But while all of this may look like bad news for renewables, some experts are arguing that the arrival of the new administration hardly spells a death knell for the industry."